-+@ Terrible and Evil @+-
It's election day in America and that's no excuse to deviate from my usual blogging style right. Well, wrong. I'm not going to mention what I did for CCGW today, or what CCGs I played (which recently has been LotRO really) but I'll attempt to write a list of unfinished features of gatlingEngine.
1. Collections. Erm... this was suppose to be something that would kick start things like tournaments and limited cardlists. However, it was introduced as a button and then seems to be forgotten. Players have been asking what it is for over a year now - it's very confusing particularly for new players. If I had a say, I'd remove it for the time being until it can be fully developed.
2. Rankings. Eventhough rankings have been part and parcel of the engine for a long time now, they still don't work properly. It's a good thing nobody uses these rankings anyways, and they aren't really important... at least not yet. Like collections, they should either be removed completely or otherwise to be made invisible. New players don't need the complications of the rankings.
3. Tournament support. What good is a gaming engine if you can't have tournaments right? Well, the gEngine can host tournaments and there have been a number of successful tournaments held so far without support from the engine. Is tournament support required? Sure, but for the time being since it's not fully supported, the Tournament (and League and Campaign) categories in the drop down of the Create Game slider should be removed or greyed out until such a time as when they can be used. Likewise, the Rank and Tour categories should be greyed out as well to prevent confusing if someone doesn't have a pass or PA or isn't a bonafide Tour-er.
4. Tokens. Heh, nothing has yet been added and for that I'm grateful. However if and when the engine is released with it, I hope it won't end up to be a "white elephant" like the above three categories, but will (within reason) be fully functional.
5. PacMans. These were introduced and then abused and subsequently removed. The legacy of the "game expert" is still there in places like the Legend and the FAQ. Perhaps with the evolution of the engine, a pacman can be defined as a game expert for an unlicensed game who has to tour that unlicensed game 3 times a month like the shepherds. However unlike the shepherds, they only get unlimited play for the game that they are a game expert of. PacMans should be nominated by the Project Lead as defined in the FAQ and approved by the ghosts.
6. "Skins". There were talks about "skinning" the engine so that the interface is customisable. This is basically just "eye candy". While it would be a nice thing to have, it's not essential, particularly at this stage of the engine. I'd rather have a more stable engine than a (maybe) prettier one.
7. Saved Games. One would have thought that such an important essential would be given a high priority. OK, it doesn't work 100% of the time, nothing works all the time right? But does it work 9 saves out of 10? Apparently, not if the game is Mythos which probably has a successful save and resume rate of maybe 1 or 2 out of 10. Babylon 5 isn't that far behind either - anything saved after about 1 to 2 hours of play is guaranteed not to be able to be resumed. If nothing else, the save game methods should be made to work reliably - I'd be happy with a 80% success rate.
8. Auto-Disconnect when downloading too many essentials. As part of the auto-logout script, the engine disconnects anyone from who it doesn't "hear" from after a couple of minutes. This is all fine and good particularly when the person has crashed out for example and needs to log back in. However when downloading a game for the first time, particularly one with a lot of essential images, it can sometime take longer than 2 minutes. During that time though, all communication seems to be one way - i.e. from the server to the player and thus the engine automatically disconnects a player partway though their download of the game for the first time, eventhough they are logged on. This is probably one of the most annoying of the defects in the engine, and the auto-disconnect should be "completed" so that it doesn't disconnect someone when they are downloading essentials.
9. Card Rendering. As part of the complex card rending method on the engine, different layers are "flattened" together. All fine and well, but in some cases when the mouse is hovering over a card and a tooltip is displayed, the tooltip is flattened onto the card as well. Well, that's just a display issue, no big problem, a refresh would solve it. The more annoying thing about this flattening is that it takes ages to refresh a view with more than 20 cards. Now if you need to quickly have a look at 2 other people's views, you must switch to the first, wait for all the cards to load and render before switching the view. If you attempt to switch while the cards are still rendering, it crashes the game. It would be nice to *not* be able to change views while cards are still rendering, or to be able to change them while they are still rendering and not crash the game.
10. Deck Builder. This has got to be the most simplistic deckbuilder I've ever seen. Fine, it does serve its purpose, but for an engine that started out serving CCGs, a more powerful Deck Builder would have been expected.
I know the engine is still in its infancy but that's no excuse for it to be shabby or badly done. It is a pity though that nobody is working full time on the engine, so I guess that's a valid excuse for it... or is it?
1. Collections. Erm... this was suppose to be something that would kick start things like tournaments and limited cardlists. However, it was introduced as a button and then seems to be forgotten. Players have been asking what it is for over a year now - it's very confusing particularly for new players. If I had a say, I'd remove it for the time being until it can be fully developed.
2. Rankings. Eventhough rankings have been part and parcel of the engine for a long time now, they still don't work properly. It's a good thing nobody uses these rankings anyways, and they aren't really important... at least not yet. Like collections, they should either be removed completely or otherwise to be made invisible. New players don't need the complications of the rankings.
3. Tournament support. What good is a gaming engine if you can't have tournaments right? Well, the gEngine can host tournaments and there have been a number of successful tournaments held so far without support from the engine. Is tournament support required? Sure, but for the time being since it's not fully supported, the Tournament (and League and Campaign) categories in the drop down of the Create Game slider should be removed or greyed out until such a time as when they can be used. Likewise, the Rank and Tour categories should be greyed out as well to prevent confusing if someone doesn't have a pass or PA or isn't a bonafide Tour-er.
4. Tokens. Heh, nothing has yet been added and for that I'm grateful. However if and when the engine is released with it, I hope it won't end up to be a "white elephant" like the above three categories, but will (within reason) be fully functional.
5. PacMans. These were introduced and then abused and subsequently removed. The legacy of the "game expert" is still there in places like the Legend and the FAQ. Perhaps with the evolution of the engine, a pacman can be defined as a game expert for an unlicensed game who has to tour that unlicensed game 3 times a month like the shepherds. However unlike the shepherds, they only get unlimited play for the game that they are a game expert of. PacMans should be nominated by the Project Lead as defined in the FAQ and approved by the ghosts.
6. "Skins". There were talks about "skinning" the engine so that the interface is customisable. This is basically just "eye candy". While it would be a nice thing to have, it's not essential, particularly at this stage of the engine. I'd rather have a more stable engine than a (maybe) prettier one.
7. Saved Games. One would have thought that such an important essential would be given a high priority. OK, it doesn't work 100% of the time, nothing works all the time right? But does it work 9 saves out of 10? Apparently, not if the game is Mythos which probably has a successful save and resume rate of maybe 1 or 2 out of 10. Babylon 5 isn't that far behind either - anything saved after about 1 to 2 hours of play is guaranteed not to be able to be resumed. If nothing else, the save game methods should be made to work reliably - I'd be happy with a 80% success rate.
8. Auto-Disconnect when downloading too many essentials. As part of the auto-logout script, the engine disconnects anyone from who it doesn't "hear" from after a couple of minutes. This is all fine and good particularly when the person has crashed out for example and needs to log back in. However when downloading a game for the first time, particularly one with a lot of essential images, it can sometime take longer than 2 minutes. During that time though, all communication seems to be one way - i.e. from the server to the player and thus the engine automatically disconnects a player partway though their download of the game for the first time, eventhough they are logged on. This is probably one of the most annoying of the defects in the engine, and the auto-disconnect should be "completed" so that it doesn't disconnect someone when they are downloading essentials.
9. Card Rendering. As part of the complex card rending method on the engine, different layers are "flattened" together. All fine and well, but in some cases when the mouse is hovering over a card and a tooltip is displayed, the tooltip is flattened onto the card as well. Well, that's just a display issue, no big problem, a refresh would solve it. The more annoying thing about this flattening is that it takes ages to refresh a view with more than 20 cards. Now if you need to quickly have a look at 2 other people's views, you must switch to the first, wait for all the cards to load and render before switching the view. If you attempt to switch while the cards are still rendering, it crashes the game. It would be nice to *not* be able to change views while cards are still rendering, or to be able to change them while they are still rendering and not crash the game.
10. Deck Builder. This has got to be the most simplistic deckbuilder I've ever seen. Fine, it does serve its purpose, but for an engine that started out serving CCGs, a more powerful Deck Builder would have been expected.
I know the engine is still in its infancy but that's no excuse for it to be shabby or badly done. It is a pity though that nobody is working full time on the engine, so I guess that's a valid excuse for it... or is it?
posted by Novelty @ 10:02 pm
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